


A Dark Night of the Soul

by Chronicler



Category: One Direction (Band), zayn malik - Fandom
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Anal Fingering, Angst, Angst and Porn, Bisexual Character, British English, British Slang, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Character of Faith, Character(s) of Color, Come Eating, Complicated Relationships, Dirty Talk, Drinking, Endearments, Foreskin Play, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internal Conflict, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, Love, M/M, Masturbation, Muslim Character, Pansexual Character, Phone Sex, Porn with Feelings, Prayer, Prostate Massage, Queer Character, Queer Themes, Ramadan, Recreational Drug Use, Reference to docking, Reference to felching, Reference to rimming, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Reminiscing, Sexual Fantasy, Slurs, Smut, عربي | Arabic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 17:33:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4188723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronicler/pseuds/Chronicler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn Malik has left One Direction and is getting on with his life. Allegedly. Really he's lying in bed unable to sleep. He's struggling to handle the pressure of having to hide his sexuality and his feelings for Liam. And he knows if everyone finds out it will be even worse, both as a celebrity and as a Muslim. That there is nowhere all the disparate parts of his identity will be accepted.</p><p>But, giving in, he calls Liam on tour, even though he promised himself he wouldn't. At first they are too mired in everything that has happened to reconnect. Liam can't get past Zayn leaving him and tries to resist. But Zayn wears down Liam's defences, and briefly they share their bodies, albeit vicariously, and admit that they still love each other. Even if it can't last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dark Night of the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I made a work skin that's in New Times Roman font, double spaced, with indented paragraphs and no blank lines between them. Let me know if you don't like it, please, and leave my work skin turned on.
> 
> My second attempt at first person POV.
> 
> Thank you Shannon, Courtney, Katy, katelynn, and Bea for beta reading, research, or support.
> 
> You liked my banners, 6789998212, so I made one.
> 
> Warning for religion combined with sex, drugs, and angst. Seriously, great big warning! If this story is going to offend you, then please just don't read it. Don't read it then have a go at me for it. I can't warn more than I have. Check the tags and the notes. I've done everything I possibly can to make sure that everyone who reads it knows exactly what they're getting. This story is set during Ramadan and deals with being queer.

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_‘In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.’ F. Scott Fitzgerald_

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Three o’clock in the morning. Three o’clock in the _fucking_ morning and I’m still awake, staring at the ceiling.

Liam must still be awake too…

But no. I promised myself I wouldn’t call him again. It just makes me seem like a needy little bitch.

Scrunching my eyes shut, I scrub my hands over my face and hair, the short bristles prickling my palms. I sigh in frustration, quick and sharp.

 _Shit_. I switch on the lamp by my bed and grab my mobile, dialling his number before I have time to talk myself out of it.

‘ _Zayn?_ ’ he asks when he answers, over the sound of other people’s voices, and blaring, generic pop music. He sounds surprised and it stabs into me; I guess I never was good at staying in touch, I just didn’t need to be when we were always together.

‘Yeah, it’s me,’ I murmur. Beneath the spicy scent of incense burning, the faint memory of the hash I smoked earlier lingers in the air; beyond my open window, trees rustle in the faint breeze, grating my raw nerves. Diamond-white stars glimmer in the immense blackness of the sky, too bright, catching my eye and attention as I try to focus on the man I’ve been trying so hard to ignore. A ghost of a life I've left behind.

‘What?’ he half yells.

‘I said, “Yeah, it’s me”!’ I raise my voice before getting a fucking grip and lowering it again; I don't want to disturb anyone. ‘Who the fuck else would be calling you from my phone?’

He sighs, and we fall into a tense silence.

‘Where are you?’ he asks as he moves somewhere quieter, the beating pulse of the music fading.

‘Arkley, at home in bed.’

‘Alone?’

‘Fuck you, yeah alone,’ I answer, but there’s no heat to my words. ‘Where are you? Somewhere in the States, right?’

I can almost hear the indifference of his shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

No, I don’t suppose it does. I’ve lost track of their tour dates. Sometimes I did even when I was still with them. Closing my eyes I swallow and hope he doesn’t hear over the noise of other people having a good time. The world carrying on without me. _Motherfuckers_.

‘What do you want?’ he asks when I don’t respond.

‘I just…’ My thoughts evade my grasp, words skittering away. ‘I just –’ I suck in a breath and try wade through the haze. ‘Can’t I just call anymore? See how you’re doing without having, like, an ulterior motive?’

‘I don't know, can you?’

Silence again. Because I don’t know either.

My turn to sigh, covering my eyes with my hand. ‘I just… I just wanted to, like, hear your voice: tell me you miss me.’

‘Fuck you,’ he says, but he just sounds sad. ‘Course I fucking miss you. I’m always gonna–’

Muffled voices interrupt whatever he was going to say, always so many demands on his time and attention. Distantly, he answers them.

‘ _Shit_ ,’ he shouts into the phone as he moves back into the thudding beat, ‘I gotta go deal with something. I’ll call you when I get up to my hotel room.’

He hangs up just as I open my mouth to reply.

He never spoke to me like that before I left.

I drop the phone onto the mattress; it bounces then stills. Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, I sigh again from deep in my chest. What the fuck am I doing? Every time I tell myself I won’t call again. Every fucking time. And every fucking time I do.

I can hear muted sounds downstairs. While some of my family sleep, the rest quietly eat suhur before they pray and fast. But they leave me be. They know I need time alone. Know I need to sleep when I can. Know I’m struggling.

My lighter is lying with my cigarettes beside my bed, surrounded by crumpled junk food wrappers. I grab it, the cheap, scratched plastic catching at my skin. A few hard presses of my thumb; loud, reluctant clicks; the flame splutters to life. It’s too bright and I narrow my eyes, but I need to concentrate. Need to wait. He always fucking kept me waiting.

Sometimes I think I’ve created the worst of all worlds by quitting.

The flame goes out.

I left my band, left Liam, because it had all become a fucking joke.

A press of my thumb and the flame erupts again in the dim light.

I was just fronting. It wasn’t me, wasn’t real: bland, colourless, sanitised. A work of fiction not even based on a true story.

The heated metal catches my thumb, the hint of a burn shivering up my nerves.

But what I’m doing now, doing next, won’t be any more legit.

My hand jerks, the flame fading away to nothing.

I can show different facets of myself now.

Another press, another spark, another flame.

But I’m still hiding more than I’m revealing.

The flame flickers and dances, an imitation of life.

As new parts of myself emerge, other parts are even further submerged, till I’m drowning in lies.

I run the flat of my hand through the heat: a threat, a warning.

Still just a conjurer, performing a different illusion now; still a fucking coward.

I slide my thumb off the button and the flame fades away.

I can’t fucking win. The rest of the world is always going to see me as a Paki terrorist no matter what I do. So fuck ‘em, I’m not hiding my roots anymore.

I let the flame flare again into existence.

But my own people don’t want to know I let men fuck me up the arse, I know they don’t. That I’m just a perverted luti letting the side down with my sins. So I hide the worst of them.

I hold my palm in the rising heat until my hand shakes from the pain and I let the flame flicker and die.

It’s like I have to choose which parts of myself to amputate. There’s nowhere to be whole. I’m left mutilated and bloody, trying to smile for the cameras.

I blow against my palm and toss the lighter onto the bed beside me.

Restless, I stumble into my bathroom, wincing when I switch on the bright light. The angry red of my palm fades as I rinse it under the cold water. I take a piss, then wash myself at the sink: face, head, arms, feet. I try to be thorough with my wuḍū, try to make myself clean. But it’s too late for that. I keep the water cold so the shock of it clears my head, icy reality splashing against me.

The mirror over the sink shows me what the world sees: a young man; handsome, everyone claims; healthy, if a little too pale, a little too thin, cheekbones sharp as knives. Piercings glint like shrapnel, and the short, dark stubble of my beard crashes into the short, platinum stubble of my hair. Leaning my hands at both sides of the cold, porcelain sink, I look into my bloodshot eyes. Almost flooded by the black holes of my pupils, the patchwork of green and brown reflects my mixed heritage. Such a blessing but such a tightrope to walk.

As I’m awake anyway, I unfurl my prayer mat on the bedroom floor, stand on it barefoot and silently give my intention to pray Fajr. Facing Mecca – facing an empty wall. Not really sure if I should while blazed and about to try seduce a man. But raising my hands in worship I surrender, eyes closed to shut out the world with its temptations. _‘Allahu Akbar.’_

Arms clasped around myself, holding myself together. Quietly, I murmur, ‘ _Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim_ ,’ as I enter into it, the Arabic second nature to my tongue.

Supplicating, down on my knees. Palms and forehead pushed against the mat, the soft threads grounding me. Years fall away and everything feels simpler; I cling to the routine, the memories, claw my way back there. Don’t let myself think. Try to carve out a moment’s peace.

Standing, kneeling, recitation, rhythm, repetition.

‘ _Rabbighfirli._ ’ _Lord forgive me, forgive me, forgive me…_

I let go, lose myself in it.

‘ _As-salamu alaykum,_ ’I whisper under my breath as I finish, but the fragile peace is already sliding from my grasp.

Afterwards, I stay kneeling in the silence. Not quite sure how to feel: pardoned or condemned.

Carefully, I fold my mat and put it away out of sight. Because I’m waiting for a phone call and I don’t need a witness. Waiting for a man to give me his voice and his words. And I’ll try for more, try get his body, vicariously at least. Try and steal a moment's peace from him too. Not down on my knees, not for him, though I have been before, many times.

The room is too still; the stark whiteness and clean lines of it, the modernist luxury of simplicity. The waning moon adds to the faint light from the lamp, keeping the darkness at bay. The warm air cloying and motionless. I know every inch of the space around me, know it like my own body, am finally truly living here. But sometimes the wanting is so much better than the having.

Showing the first hint of dawn, the sky is a dull blue velvet, the sun readying itself to creep back. Quickly, I close the window and pull the curtains shut across it. I don’t need any witnesses out there either, and there are always people watching, waiting for me to fuck up even more than I already have.

I fall back into bed with a grunt, stretching from my fingertips down to my toes, before I settle.

Closing my eyes, I wait. Try to go limp, try sink into the mattress, try unravel the tension always pulling my nerves taut.

My phone plays the JT track Liam made me set as his ringtone; I suppose I could change it now. I murmur, ‘ _Bismillah,_ ’ for luck as I grab it. Too quickly I answer with, ‘What the fuck took you so long?’ because fuck being reasonable: I need to escape the silence. Besides, I’d hoped to finish before dawn, and it’s too late now. To not fuck when I should be fasting. Not indulge when I should be abstaining. But it’s dark where Liam is, so that probably counts, and it’s not like there’s an allotted time of day when it’s okay to have phone sex with a man I used to know…

‘– not like you ever call me, and to be fair we were in the hotel bar,’ he’s saying when I tune back in. ‘Louis was being a little shit and got himself into, you know, a bit of trouble, and I had to go try –’

‘I don’t wanna know,’ I interrupt him to say. Because I don’t have to deal with any of their bullshit anymore. The line’s crackling, cutting out intermittently, and it helps, helps remind me how far away he is and why I’m not there.

He says something, but staticky silence slices it to pieces; I picture him pacing out his nervous energy. 'What?' I ask. 'And stay still for once, you're fucking up the reception.'

‘I asked why the fuck you called me if you don’t want to know?’ But the line settles, belying his tone.

‘I told you, I just, like, wanna hear your voice. It sounds sexy when you’re pissed at me.’

He sighs again, as though I’m just another problem he has to deal with. ‘What time is it there? Shouldn’t you be asleep?’

‘You can’t do the maths?’

‘ _Zayn_.’ There’s a warning in his voice, not that I believe it. He always saw me as something fragile to be protected. I don’t think he ever really knew me at all.

‘What you gonna do, like, put me over your knee and spank me? You can if you’ve got the _guts_. Shit, you can do whatever the _fuck_ you want to me…’ I try to sound teasing, but I just sound petulant and it falls flat, my ambivalence bleeding into my words. _Let me go_ , _hold on, let me go, hold on, let me go, hold on, let me –_ haemorrhages through my open wounds while I try and hold myself together.

‘I asked you what time it is?’

I sigh too and look at the clock on my phone. ‘Almost 4 a.m.’

‘You rang me in the middle of the night because you’re horny?’

‘Nah, I rang you to hear your voice, me being horny’s just an added bonus.’

‘Have you had any sleep at all?’

‘Not yet. Getting off usually helps…’

Silence.

‘You still there?’ I ask.

‘Yeah.’ He sounds weary, even more tired than I feel. ‘But you can’t do this. You can’t leave then treat me like a _fucking_ booty call.’

I close my eyes, my hand on my chest, restless fingers plucking at the worn cotton of my T-shirt. ‘What are you wearing?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Zayn, this how it’s gonna be now? I don’t hear from you for weeks, you ignore all my messages, then you call me up just to get you off? You gonna be a big solo star, marry some blonde woman you don’t even much like, and keep me on the down low for when you’re feeling desperate and lonely? ‘Cause you can’t handle everyone knowing who you really are?’

‘You can always say no.’ Hand stilling, I open my eyes, looking back up at the ceiling I’m starting to hate. I know every flaw in the paintwork, every tiny crack.

‘No, I can’t.’ Desolation in his voice. He sounds like he did years ago when we first met, still needy and damaged underneath the deep roughness he’s grown into. He was such a desperate little twink back then. And even then I wanted his dick. He keeps talking, keeps trying to pretend this isn’t inevitable, ‘But I can’t –’

‘Then stop bitching at me like either of us have any fucking choice in this,’ I interrupt him to say. ‘I don’t wanna argue anymore.’

‘You high? You sound antsy. I know how you get.’

‘Just kinda buzzed, nowt much, and it’s not helping.’ I say with a shrug. ‘You on your own?’ I don’t ask who he’s fucking now. I don’t want to know.

‘Right now, yeah,’ he says, and I ignore whatever the fuck that means.

‘So what’re you wearing?’ I ask, because that’s what people say, isn't it?

‘A suit; I had a meeting with a sponsor earlier.’

‘ _Hmmm_ , want me to call you Daddy and be your bit of rough?’

‘No,’ he says, still trying to keep the wall up between us.

‘I know you think it’s a joke when I call you Daddy, and like, it totally is… but I mean it too, you know? But like, I can’t go back to whatever the fuck it was we had. Just accept me as I am, yeah?’

‘Okay,’ he sighs out the word, weary, resigned. ‘I’ll take what I can get. But not forever.’

‘I know.’ My voice is tight, and it aches down to my bones. ‘Now tell me what you’re doing?’

‘Just loosening my tie and getting myself another drink.’ I hear him pouring it, the tone of his voice tensing briefly while he clamps the phone between his shoulder and cheek. ‘Now I’m sitting on the couch. I’m unbuttoning my waistcoat. Shit, I suck at this, I sound like I’m narrating a bloody boring film. Tell me what you’re wearing?’

I laugh. ‘We’re both getting all the fucking clichés out tonight, aren't we? Just an old T-shirt with holes in it and tracky bottoms. I should lie, say I’m wearing silk and lace lingerie, summat sexy.’

‘You’re always sexy,’ he says, sounding sad again.

‘Tell me what you’d do to me if I was there?’ I don’t want him maudlin.

‘I’d ask you why you left me.’

‘Shit Liam,’ I sit up in bed, jaw clenching for a moment while I swallow painfully, throat constricting. ‘You wanna get it on, or just make me feel like shit? ‘Cause I feel bad enough without you –’

‘ _Shhh_ , babe, I‘m sorry,’ his voice softens. ‘You’re right, there’s no point. Just lie back and I’ll make you feel good.’

Grudgingly, I relax enough to lie down, the fine cotton sheet tangled around my legs in my massive, empty bed. The soft pillows beneath my head feel like a contradiction.

‘I know how to make you feel good,’ he says. And he always did know. And how to make me feel bad. How to make me _feel_.

‘Tell me what you want to do to me?’ I ask.

‘Everything. Every _fucking_ thing.’ I may be going to hell for this, but the desperation creeping into his voice just turns me on more. ‘Suck on your fingers,’ he says, ‘get ‘em wet, and get ‘em on your nipples. Be rough, I want to hear you gasp.’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ I breathe the word into the phone, pushing my T-shirt up to my throat. I lick my thumb quickly, then rub at my nipple, feel it puckering, hardening, before I pinch. Let my nails dig in, jagged. I gasp for him; he makes a pleased sounding hum in response. I hear him gulp as he takes a mouthful of his drink, the clink of him putting it down.

‘I wish it was your mouth on me,’ I tell him.

‘No you don’t or you’d be here.’

I stop touching myself. ‘For fucks sake Liam, if you’re gonna keep being a twat about this, I’m –’

‘ _Shit._ ’ I can picture him closing his eyes, putting his hand over them, rubbing at the deep lines etched into his forehead. He carries on talking: ‘I just miss you being around, you know? I miss having you to talk to. Miss having you to touch. But I’ll get used to it. I mean –’

‘I know what you meant.’

He sighs.

‘Tell me what you wanna do to me.’ I ask again, trying to defeat the silence that threatens to drown us. ‘The stuff you never got to do.’ Because it was always furtive fumbling in shadows. Never what we really wanted. And I couldn't keep doing it. I couldn’t. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d had the guts to do everything instead of choosing nothing. If I hadn’t run. I rub my lip with the side of my finger, trying to comfort myself, the words breaking against my skin as I say, ‘ _Tell me._ ’

I hear him gulp down more of his drink. Jack probably, but I don’t ask, and I don’t ask how much he’s been drinking without me there to distract him. Better not to know that either. ‘I want…’ he pauses, takes a deep breath, ‘I want to open you up and get my cock inside you. To hold you down and _fuck_ you until you forget everyone and everything else. Make you beg for it, sob for it. Tie you to my bed and just keep you there, waiting for my cock, so you can’t get away again. I want…’

He keeps talking, voice rapid, firing like bullets, the Dutch courage making him reckless. I could get high on it, the endorphins rushing through me. I push the sheet off with my feet, shove my tracksuit bottoms down a bit too anxiously, dragging over my dick. But there’s no one to see, no one to judge. Self-inflicted scars criss-cross the tops of my thighs, a map that leads nowhere. Another dead-end of my own failures. I try not to look at them.

Even in the warm night the air feels cool on my hot, blood-engorged flesh.

His filthy words stop when I spit into my hand.

‘Least get some lube,’ he says.

‘You’re still such a fucking scout,’ I tell him, but I wipe my hand on my T-shirt and drop the phone onto the mattress so I can pull open the drawer in the cabinet next to my bed. ‘Shit,’ I mutter when it sticks, my angle all wrong. I wrench it out too hard and it gets away from me, hits the floor. ‘ _Shit_.’ I still for a moment, listening in case anyone else in the massive, quiet house comes to check on me: nothing. Leaning over the edge of the bed, I root around in the gloom. ‘Ha! I exclaim in hollow victory when I find a messy, half-empty tube.

I collapse onto the bed and grab the phone, ‘Back.’

No response.

‘Liam?’ I ask, ‘you better not have fucking gone…’ I check the screen: still connected.

I push my T-shirt back up while I wait, push my trousers further down my hips, feeling like I’m just moving enough of my clothes out of the way to get screwed. It feels better than it should.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbles into the phone, breathless. ‘Just went to grab some stuff.’

‘What stuff? Owt kinky?’

‘Tissues and lotion: it was all I could find in my suitcase.’

‘Nah, don’t use tissues, I want you to get spunk all over your expensive suit, dirty you up.’

‘You won’t even see it,’ he points out the fucking obvious.

‘But I’ll _know_.’

‘What did you do while I was gone?’

‘I’m lying on my back with my tits and dick out like a cheap prossie.’

‘ _Shit,_ Zayn,’ he mutters, and I smile.

I lay the phone on my chest, grab the tube, slick my hand. When I put it back to my ear Liam’s still talking.

‘I didn’t hear any of that,’ I say, enjoying the aggravated noise he makes. I’m already half hard in anticipation and I let out a relieved hiss as I slide my hand around my dick, smooth my thumb over the head, pushing insistently at the slit.

‘Starting without me?’ Liam asks, sounding intrigued. I imagine him biting his insanely plump lower lip, the way it blanches white then blushes red as it pulls free…

I moan in my throat, my movements slow, languid. ‘You can catch up.’

‘Got a, um, a dildo, something to fuck yourself with?’ he asks, and I’m glad he can’t see me smirk at how awkward he still sounds, even after everything.

‘Yeah, but I can’t, like, do that, hold the phone, and get myself off at the same time.’ But I let my hand drift lower for a moment, body tense, head rising off the pillow, slick fingertip rubbing at my hole. I wish it was his tongue. But I’ve made my choice and there’s no going back. ‘You touching yourself?’ I ask him, relaxing onto my back again.

‘ _Hmmm_ ,’ the only sound he makes.

‘Don’t be such a fucking tease: tell me what you’re doing.’

‘Just holding myself through my trousers. I’m getting hard and there’s a wet patch where I’m leaking already.’

‘ _Shit_ ,’ I gasp out, digging my fingertips in as I stroke myself, glad of the drag against my skin.

‘Was that alright? I’m trying, but I don’t know what I’m meant to say…’

‘Yeah, babe, more than alright.’

‘I’ve missed you calling me that,’ he says, voice hushed.

‘You ever gonna get your big dick out? Want you to ruin your fucking suit,’ I say to challenge him. I don’t want him getting lost in his head again, don’t want his recriminations or, worse, his disappointment.

‘Hang on,’ there’s a quiet thud as the phone lands somewhere soft, and I hear the satisfying, serrated sound of a zip being pulled down. ‘Just trying to open the bottle, the lid’s stuck,’ he says back into the phone, ‘gimme a sec,’ and he goes again.

‘ _Liam_ , stop fucking with me – but yeah, get your dick wet,’ I tell him, though he’s not listening.

My phone chimes in my ear to tell me I have a text. Shit, why won’t people ever leave me the fuck alone? But I check who it’s from anyway: Liam. I open it, murmuring, ‘ _Fuck,’_ as I take in the picture he’s sent. The respectable grey wool of Liam’s suit and the tip of his silk tie, shirttails pushed aside and fly open. His thick dick, hard and erect, pushes up out of it, shiny and slick. Clear liquid oozes from the head, caught just as it was about to drip down. Veins run over its blushed surface, and I can almost feel it pulse and twitch. It’s weirdly beautiful and I miss it so much more than I should. His hand is wrapped around it, fingers long, blunt, grasping.

Mouth watering, I lick my dry, chapped lips. Fuck, I’ve missed him too.

Reluctantly filing the image away for future solitary use, I take a picture down my own exposed body, the flash too bright. I send it quickly, leaving behind wetly smudged fingerprints at the scene of my crime.

‘ _Holy shit, baby_ ,’ he sounds reassuringly awed. ‘Fuck, I love the curve of your waist, the hollow by your hips; you’re prettier than any girl I ever saw.’

My phone is crackling every time I move, and I want to smash it against the wall. If I get cut off I’m fucking suing somebody. Balancing it on the pillow, I tell him: ‘I’m putting you on speakerphone. Don’t be too loud, my family are staying for Ramadan and the school holidays.’

‘That’s exactly what everyone wants to hear when they’ve got their cock in their hand,’ he says, but he keeps his voice low.

My smile doesn’t quite reach my eyes. I keep my voice hushed too, head turned a little towards the mouthpiece, ‘We’ve done worse shit in more fucked up places: _don’t stop talking_.’

‘Fuck, you know I suck at this, I feel like an idiot. Fine, I’m pulling back my foreskin,’ he sucks in a breath, ‘I know you loved playing with it, loved getting the head of your cock inside it, feeling what it’s like to have one. _Fuck_ , I’m so hard for you, you should be here with your smart mouth on me, I should be fucking your face not my hand.’ I can hear his breath speeding up, harsh against the phone, hitting it in a rhythm I can’t feel against my skin.

‘Don’t stop,’ my hand moves faster, hips rising off the bed. ‘Shit, I need, I need –’ my voice breaks, choked up, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m just getting off, just a favour from an old friend. That’s all. I tug on the coarse hair at the base with my other hand, pull my skin taught, the pain giving an edge to the pleasure. ‘Why aren’t you fucking talking? You never used to shut the fuck up.’

He laughs, brief, and not like anything’s funny. ‘I’d call you a bitch, but you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Sometimes I think I’m the only one who really knows you. _Fuck_ ,’ his breath hitches and I picture his finger catching the spot under the head of his dick that always made him lose control when I did it. ‘C’mon, darlin’,’ he manages to gasp out, ‘slide a finger inside yourself, I know you get off better like that. I’d be inside you if I was there. I never – I never got to be with you the way I wanted, I –’

‘Don’t – just tell me what you wanna do to me. Tell me what a _slag_ I am, make me fucking _beg_ for it.’ But anxiously I push my trousers down, then work them off with my feet while I slick my hands, muttering, ' _Shit_ ,' when it drips onto the sheets. I bend my knees, let my thighs fall open, shove my hand down between them. My wrist pushes hard against my balls as I do what he said, work a finger inside. It’s awkward, easier when someone else does it to me, but I need it _now_.

‘You doing it?’

‘Yeah,’ I breathe out the word, forcing another finger in and rutting down on it while I work my dick.

‘Shit, baby, you’re the hottest thing I ever saw, the most beautiful. Sometimes I wish – I wish I’d never laid eyes on you, you know? ‘Cause it hurts too much not having you belong to me all the time. I never told you –’

‘ _Liam_ ,’ I drag out his name, the word filling my mouth, emphasising every syllable. ‘I don’t need your fucking whining – just make me stop thinking.’

‘You gonna beg me?’

‘Shit – okay. _Fuck_ ,’ I gasp as I hit the angle just right, curled fingers stroking myself inside, relentless, rubbing against velvety heat. ‘Like, make me cum, let me cum, I _fucking_ need it. I –’

‘If I had my cock inside you I’d make you forget everything else, everyone else, you know? Make – make you not care about all the bullshit. Make you mine. So you couldn’t even, something… couldn’t even walk afterwards.’ His breathing evens out, like his movements have stopped, but I’m past caring. ‘Fill you up with my spunk. I wanna see it dripping down your thighs. _Fuck_. See your tight little hole gape from having my cock pound into it. Get my mouth on you, eat you out, lick you clean…’

The chaotic tide of his words doesn’t stop, and I let it wash over me while I slam into myself down to my knuckles, my dick straining along my belly. I pretend my skinny, restless fingers are his big, well-meaning hand wrapped around me. My breathing is ragged as I exert myself, a singer’s throat with a smoker’s lungs. But I moan for him, hear him swear under his breath.

‘ _Fuck_ yourself harder,’ he says, takes another drink, words slowing. ‘You gonna be a good boy and cum for me? I wanna hear it… Wake everyone the fuck up, I don’t – I don’t _fucking_ care.’ And he means it, I know he does, know he’s the brave one.

‘ _Shit_ ,’ it’s a surprise and a relief when I hurtle over the edge, past the point where I have any control left, pulsing my load over the taut skin stretched over my abdomen. I gasp; it sounds like pain. My body contracts, squeezing my fingers till it hurts. He doesn’t stop talking; words of yearning he’ll deny having said, promises I won’t let him keep, tinny through the speaker as they fall over me.

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ I murmur around a brief, shaky laugh as the tension ebbs away. I slide my fingers out of my clinging body, but keep moving my other hand, squeezing myself dry.

‘You cum yet?’ I manage to ask, sounding wrecked.

‘Nah,’ there’s tension in his voice, ‘that was for you.’

I gasp in a breath. ‘Don’t act like such a fucking martyr.’ I finally still.

‘Taste yourself.’

‘ _Perv_.’ But I do it, trail my fingers upwards between the prominent arches of my ribcage, through the streaks staining the tattoos on my chest till I reach the bunched cotton of my T-shirt.

‘What’s it taste like?’ he asks. I imagine his eyelids drifting shut as he licks his lips, even if really he’s just playing along. ‘C'mon, tell me.’

I suck my fingers, letting my lips make a wet sound when I slide them free, putting on a performance like the strippers we saw in Vegas. ‘Salty, and the lube’s bitter as fuck. Hang on.’ My T-shirt falls over the mess on my skin as I sit up; with a shrug I wipe my hands on it, and rub the thin cotton to soak up the cum on my body before it starts to dry. I pull on my trousers, tuck myself away. Grabbing the glass of lukewarm water from next to my bed I wash away the taste.

When I turn off speakerphone and put my mobile back to my ear, I can hear the slick sound of Liam stroking himself fast, and his low groans. One corner of my lips quirks up into a satisfied smirk. I sing a few bars of some song I can’t remember the title of while I listen, breathing out the words, slow and sultry, not hitting the notes.

‘Enjoy the show, babe?’ I ask.

He groans. ‘I’m gonna put you on, on speaker-thingy, need both hands, just don’t stop talking, okay?’

‘What do I get for it?’ I ask, stretching out luxuriously, back arching off the bed with a grunt. I can barely keep my eyes open, but I’m not stopping now.

‘I won’t fly back there and fuck the shit out of you in front of everyone.’

‘That’s not much of a threat.’

‘ _Zayn_ ,’ his turn to whine now, but it’s gruff when he does it, and my dick’s still half-hard, straining against threadbare cotton.

I adjust myself and say, ‘Okay, okay, your turn.’ The sound of his ragged breathing recedes but the intriguing wet slap of flesh on flesh grows louder when he places the phone next to his thigh.

‘I know what you’re doing,’ I tell him, my voice raspy, ‘you need both hands so you can get one into your trousers and fondle your balls. Like, remember that time before a concert – where were we? Holland? Sweden? Fuck knows. All I remember is you being so worked up before it I couldn’t calm you down. Ended up down on my knees in the dressing room with your balls in my mouth, sucking ‘em one at a time, drove you out of your fucking mind. You wanked while I did it, got spunk in my hair, it was a bitch to get out before we went on stage.’

I can hear his moans above, echoey in the distance, deep and breathy.

While I talk quietly, reminiscing about quick, frantic sex, I close my eyes and run my hand over my chest, the cotton damp under my fingers: spunk and sweat. Quickly, I pull my T-shirt off, rub my torso with the drier bits, then chuck it onto the floor.

When I listen again I can hear him swearing, hear my name, and I try push away the longing and regret. I’ll get over it. Maybe.

Curling up on my side, phone held to my ear, I keep talking, letting every filthy thing I can think of tumble out of my mouth. ‘And the first time you shagged me, bent over a dressing room table. Fucked me bare because we didn’t have any johnny’s and I didn’t give a fuck. I watched you in the mirror while you did it, you looked so out of it, like you’d die if you didn’t get inside me. It was like watching porn, ‘cept it was us. Wish we’d done it properly sometime, slow and easy…’

I fall silent until his distant, crackling, increasingly inebriated voice says something I can’t entirely make out, but I get the gist of it: he needs me.

‘Sorry, jaan,’ I whisper, and immediately hope he didn’t hear me.

I have no words left.

Awareness of the world catches up to me with a rush, and I grip the phone too tight, pull the sheet back over me. But I don’t think anyone heard us, the house unmoving beyond my locked door. It's a separate world for now, I'm Alice fallen back down the rabbit hole.

I hear him grunt, hear him curse, hear the slick, wet sounds speed up then slow down until I can’t hear them anymore.

‘You better have ruined your fucking expensive suit,’ I murmur.

I wait, picturing him wiping his dick and his hands with his stupidly responsible tissues.

There’s a crash down the line and a mumbled, ‘ _Fuck_ ,’ then shuffling around.

‘ _Careful_ ,’ I can’t stop myself saying, not that it’s my place anymore to watch out for him when he’s doing dumb, clumsy shit.

‘ _Jesus fucking Christ_ , baby,’ he says breathlessly, with a soft thud like he’s collapsing back onto the sofa. He sounds clear enough that I know my voice isn’t breaking the silence of a fancy hotel room anymore. ‘You’ve got a fucking filthy mouth on you.’ His laugh sounds too close to hysteria.

‘Isn't that a line from –’ I say, almost laughing too – but my leaving’s still too raw to joke about songs I’ll never sing again, and my brief smile fades away. ‘Never mind.’ He’s too out of it to even notice, finally winding down.

‘I need to get out of this suit, you know, before I pass out. It’s, um, damp and stick–sticky,’ he says eventually, voice muffled as he looks down at himself. He’s probably trying to smooth out the material, make it look respectable when it’s beyond hope.

‘Your body’s bangin’, you’re so fucking _big_ and hairy, so fit, so fucking hot.’ I yawn around the words, stretching again.

‘I’m sit– sitting alone in a hotel room, half pissed, stinking of whisky, in a sweaty, spunk stained suit with my cock out, on the phone with a man who’s on the other side of the world and won’t even take my calls most of the time. I don’t feel hot, I feel like a… like a fucking mug.’

I open my eyes and look at the stupid fucking ceiling. I don’t speak. There’s nothing left to say.

‘If they hack our phones that’ll solve it all, you know? Bring it all out. No, I mean… Yeah, that is what I mean…’ he says, more to himself than me, and I have nothing to say to that either. Maybe it’d make things easier. Maybe I wouldn’t survive it. Maybe that’d be easier too.

He keeps talking, slurring as he hunts for elusive words. I hate hearing him faltering, tripping, knowing I did this to him. His voice is ragged, worn out: ‘Um, I need to, you know, get a… get a… get a shower, and clean my… phone… When’re you gonna call me again? Are you gonna call me again?’

‘Dunno,’ I answer with a shrug that no one can see.

He sighs. ‘… Maybe one day I’ll stop ans– answering.’

‘Maybe one day I’ll stop calling.’

‘It’d be easier if you did.’

‘No one’s ever called me easy,’ I say around a yawn.

‘Tons of people have called you easy…’

‘Fuck you,’ but I smile around the words. I feel sated, like I can finally sleep. ‘You never complai–’

‘– You sound… what was I gonna say… tired? You sound tired.’

‘So fucking tired,’ I murmur. ‘Sometimes I wish I was, like, stronger. I wish –’

‘I know.’

‘And you know I love you, right? I mean, it doesn't change nowt, but…’

‘I know. Me too. Me too. Now get some rest,’ he sighs, yet again, sounding resigned, ‘… and call me next time you can’t sleep. I’ll an–’ he hiccups on a breath, ‘I’ll answer.’

‘I know,’ I murmur.

My eyelids are heavy, the phone slipping out of my grasp. Aptly I feel myself drifting away from him.

Distantly, he drags out the words, 'Night, sweetheart.'

I hum a response, letting the call disconnect as I curl up and finally, finally sleep. I hate saying goodbye.

 

**_ The end_**

**Author's Note:**

> 'Jaan' means 'Life' in Urdu and is used as an endearment.
> 
> Arabic:
> 
> 'Bismillah' means 'In the name of God' and is said by Muslims at the beginning of an undertaking.
> 
> 'Allahu Akbar' means 'God is great'.
> 
> The Fajr prayer is the first of the five daily Muslim prayers.
> 
> Wuḍū is ritual washing performed in preparation for prayer and worship.
> 
> 'Rabbighfirli' means 'Lord forgive me'.
> 
> ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim,’ means 'In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful.'
> 
> 'Luti' means queer and is used as an insult, referring to the 'People of lot' in the Qur'an.
> 
> 'Suhur' is the meal eaten before sunrise during the Islamic month of Ramadan.
> 
> 'Mecca' is the holiest city in Islam and is faced during prayers (the Qibla).
> 
> 'As-salamu alaykum', means 'Peace be upon you.'
> 
> British slang or dialect:
> 
> 'Prossie' is means 'Prostitute'.
> 
> 'Mug' means 'Gullible and foolish'.
> 
> 'Nowt' means 'Nothing' in Yorkshire.
> 
> 'Owt' means 'Anything' in Yorkshire.
> 
> 'Summat' means 'Something'.
> 
> 'Paki' is an offence term used as racist abuse towards people of Pakistani descent.


End file.
